Shining Through

Before the first snowfall of the season, I always wonder how I am going to survive another winter without the vibrant colours of other seasons, and I feel a vague anxiety (sometimes sheer panic) thinking about the long, dark months to come. Shame on me for harboring such morose and mutinous thoughts. I should know better.

There are turnings and transformations everywhere: feathery ice archipelagos in highland rivers as they freeze over, icicles dangling from trees along the shore, field grasses poking their silvery heads out of drifts, melt water falling from the roof and freezing again in midair, fallen leaves with frosty grasses shining through them.

Everything my cronish eye lights on is food for notebook and lens, a fine thing since I am unable to wander as far as I once did. There are so many years of memories of winter rambles to revisit... I remember the hollow sound of the north wind moving down the gorge above the frozen lake, snow crunching pleasingly under my feet on the trail, the sussurus of flurries falling in the woods on a quiet day. I remember the sprucey fragrance given off by the snowbound evergreens in my favorite grove, how snowflakes tasted when I caught them on my tongue.

And winter's breathtaking nights, velvety black and filled with stars from here to there...  How can one not be dazzled and uplifted by lambent winter moons and the countless constellations dancing over one's head on clear nights. Sometimes, the stars seem almost close enough to reach up and touch. The season is a fabulous treat for backyard astronomers and stargazey types like this old hen. 

Absent the vibrant colors dancing on the earth's palette at other times, winter's gifts are paler hues, swirling shapes and glittering patterns. Each and every one is exquisite. Outdoors, the blues and golds on offer are sumptuous. Indoors, old window panes, heaps of books, bowls of fruit and cups of tea beckon. So does the sunlight coming through the window in a friend's farmhouse. I can do this, yes, I can.

Sequestered, Week 318 (CCCXVIII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Do you see how an act is not, as young men think, like a rock that one picks up and throws, and it hits or misses, and that's the end of it. When that rock is lifted, the earth is lighter; the hand that bears it heavier. When it is thrown, the circuits of the stars respond, and where it strikes or falls, the universe is changed. On every act the balance of the whole depends. The winds and seas, the powers of water and earth and light, all that these do, and all that the beasts and green things do, is well done, and rightly done. All these act within the Equilibrium. From the hurricane and the great whale's sounding to the fall of a dry leaf and the gnat's flight, all they do is done within the balance of the whole.

But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore

Merry Samhain/Hallowmas

Merry Samhain/Hallowmas

Happy November!

Friday Ramble - Samhain (Halloween) Thoughts

Here we are again at my favorite festive observance in the whole turning year. This is the eve of Samhain, or in popular parlance, Halloween.

On morning walks, there's a chill in the air that cannot be ignored. Daylight arrives later with every passing day, and dusk makes an earlier appearance, village street lamps turning themselves on one by one, hours before they used to. The shorter days and longer nights are all too apparent to a crone's fierce and gimlet eye, at least to this crone's eye. How did we get here so swiftly?

The last days of October have a beauty all their own. In the great wide world, crops and fruit have been gathered in and stored, farm animals tucked into barns, stables and coops readied for the long white season. Rail fences wear frost crystals, and nearby field grasses crunch pleasingly underfoot. Wild beasties are frantically topping up their winter larders and preparing warm burrows for winter.

Most trees have already withdrawn into themselves for the long white season, and their leaves have fallen, but the great oaks on my favorite hill are reluctant to part with their finery, and they are hanging on to every leaf. A north wind scours the wooded slopes and sweeps fallen fragments into rustling drifts and heaps. The air is spicy and carries the promise of deep cold days to come.

The festival (cross quarter day) marks “summer's end', the beginning of the dark half of the year. According to the old Celtic two-fold division of the year, summer was the interval between Beltane and Samhain, and winter the interval from Samhain to Beltane. It was also the gate between one year and another. For the ancestors, the old year ended at sunset on October 31, and a new year danced into being.

Some of us are enchanted by seasonal turnings in the Great Round and the old ways. Some of us love spooky "stuff", the fey, the mysterious and the unknown. Some like Halloween "clobber" and dressing up. Others are fascinated by the myriad ways in which the human species has measured the passage of time over the centuries.

The festival doings of the ancients celebrated pivotal cosmic points in their year, and Samhain was sacred to them. It was a fey interval in which the natural order dissolved back into primordial chaos for a brief unruly fling before regenerating, burnished and newly ordered for another journey through the seasons. They believed the veil between the living and the dead was thin on Samhain night, and that one's beloved dead could return for a visit. All the old festivals celebrate the cyclical nature of existence, but October 31st does so more than any other. 

In the last few years, many loved ones have left this realm and gone on ahead.  While they were here, they loved this world fiercely, and they treasured its innate abundance and wildness, its grandeur, grace and reciprocity. Lit from within, they blazed with life and passion wherever they went, and they lighted up every room they entered—it was always a little darker when they left. Somewhere beyond the here and now, my dear departed ones are still alight, and I try to remember that. My Samhain altar gets more crowded with every passing year, but there is always room for them all, and places will be set for everyone at the old oak table tonight.

Three cheers for trick-or-treating, tiny guisers and goblins on the threshold. What's not to love about witches, ghosts and goblins, grinning jack-o-lanterns, the colors orange and black? As I dole out treats to wee neighborhood friends tonight, I will reflect on the old year and tuck it thankfully away under a blanket of fallen maple leaves. I will think good thoughts about the cycle that is coming into being, and I will remember that endings and beginnings are natural and ordained parts of earthly existence, not something to be feared.

Bright blessings to you and your clan. May your jack-o-lanterns glow brightly tonight, and throngs of tiny costumed guests attend your threshold. May your home be a place of warmth and light, and your hearth a haven from things that go bump in the night. May there be laughter and merriment at your door, music and fellowship in abundance. May all good things come to you and your clan.

Thursday Poem - All Hallows Eve

Night of the void between the worlds,

night when the veil between the worlds is stirring,

lifting, when the old year shrivels and fades,

and the new year has not yet begun,

when light takes the form of darkness,

when the last light sinks into darkness like

spilled water, disappears in the leaves,

in the hot secret runs of earth underneath.

when grandmothers rise like mist,

the silent grandmothers with soft tongues of fog

in the ear, claiming nothing for themselves, nor

complaining that they were abandoned,

when children go out clothed in darkness,

the children with sweet orange lips slip among

whispers, go out with wavering candles among

crosses and mossy eyes in stone,

when children go out in the mist,

the children tasting of candy, of carelessly spilled

dreams, the children like faraway stars

flaming into the soft folds of darkness.

Dolores Stewart from Doors to the Universe

Wordless Wednesday - First Light

The Frosted Garden

Alas, the garden is being put to bed for the winter, and it is sad to be pruning the roses and cutting back the perennial residents of the bee garden for another long winter. As much as I loved the flowers in their prime, they are fetching creatures on an icy morning in late October, outlined in frost and sparkling in the early light. 

The Old Wild Mother (Earth) brings other gifts though. The winter bird feeders have been taken out and stuffed with the best wild bird seed I could find, and the garden is full of happy birds, dancing from branch to branch in the cedar hedges and singing their pleasure as soon as the sun is up. The seed is purchased in bulk from my local farm co-op and the bins in the garage have just been filled for the long white season. The winter choir approves of the menu on offer and says so.

Next up are the suet feeders, as soon as I can find a place to hang them that is not accessible to the squirrels - the little blighters have their own buffets, but they are never satisfied and always looking for more. Seed is also scattered on the deck for ground feeding birds like juncos and sparrows, and they are not shy about letting me know when their smorgasboard is running low.

Sequestered, Week 317 (CCCXVII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves - we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other's destiny.

Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

Holding the Sky

Friday Ramble - A Later Shade of Gold

Many trees in the eastern Ontario highlands have already lost their leaves and fallen asleep in their leaf-strewn alcoves, but others are just starting to turn. Some hold their turning in abeyance until late in November, and it is a pleasure to see them in red and gold at a time when most of their kin are bare for the winter.

Whole hillsides of lacy tamarack are bright yellow, and their foliage dazzles the eyes. When I remember their splendor in the depths of winter, the memory will leave me close to tears and hankering for a long trip on foot into the forests of northern Ontario. I can almost hear the crunch of the white stuff under my snowshoes, inhale the fragrance of evergreens and fresh snowfall. 

Butternuts are always the first to drop their leaves, but the great oaks along our favourite woodland trail retain their bronzy leaves well into winter, and native beeches are wearing a delightful coppery hue. One of our favorite old maples puts on a splendid golden performance at this time of the year, and we attend her one woman show with pleasure. While in her clearing, we remember to say thanks for her efforts to brighten up this rather subdued interval in the turning of the seasons.

It has been a windy autumn, and it was delightful to learn this week that the north wind has not loosened  Maple's leaves and left her standing bare and forlorn on the hillside with her sisters. It (the wind, that is) has been doing its best, but the tree is standing fast. I would be "over the moon" if I could photograph or paint something even the smallest scrip as grand and elemental and graceful as Maple is creating in her alcove. Every curve and branch and burnished dancing leaf is a wonder, and the blue sky above her is a perfect counterpoint.

Writing this, I remembered that as well as being an archaic word for a scrap or fraction or tiny piece of something, the word scrip also describes a small wallet or pouch once carried by pilgrims and seekers. That seems fitting for our late October journeys into the woods, for our standing breathless under Maple in all her glory. Belonging to the sisterhood of tree and leaf in autumn is a fine thing.

Thursday Poem - This Time of Year

when the light leaves early, sun slipping down
behind the beech trees as easily as a spoon
of cherry cough syrup, four deer step

delicately up our path, just at the moment

when the colors shift, to eat fallen apples

in the tall grass. Great grey ghosts.

If we steal outside in the dark, we can

hear them chew. A sudden movement,
they're gone, the whiteness of their tails
a burning afterimage. A hollow pumpkin

moon rises, turns the dried corn to

chiaroscuro, shape and shadow; 

the breath of the wind draws the leaves

and stalks like melancholy cellos.

These days are songs, noon air that flows

like warm honey, the maple trees' glissando
of fat buttery leaves. The sun goes straight

to the gut like a slug of brandy, an eau-de-vie.

Ochre October: the sky, a blue dazzle,

the grand finale of trees, this spontaneous

applause; when darkness falls like a curtain,

the last act, the passage of time, that blue

current; October, and the light leaves early,

our radiant hungers, all these golden losses.

Barbara Crooker, from Radiance

Wordless Wednesday - Reflection

Hitching A Rosy Ride

Beau and I usually notice our neighbor's bright red Toyota truck on our walks, but at this time of the year, his whole yard is a thing of beauty. The old maple that spreads its canopy over his driveway is doing its autumn thing and dropping heaps of leaves all over the truck's hood, an eye grabbing performance if there ever was one. Rounding the corner yesterday and seeing the place stopped us right in our tracks.

Villagers like to compare notes on the colours of local maples in autumn, and we tell each other about dazzling specimens, exchanging notes whenever we meet on dog walks. The reds have pride of place, but the golden acacias on Byron avenue often get a mention too, ditto the buttery birches, aspens and ginkgos nearby.

With the slow return of the village and its wild places to softer, more earthy hues, a little red (or gold) is a fine thing in late autumn. Ivan's truck and his magnificent maple fill us with quiet pleasure, every time we see them.

Sequestered, Week 316 (CCCXVI)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

You cannot buy the revolution.

You cannot make the revolution.

You can only be the revolution.

It is in your spirit or it is nowhere.

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed

October Song

Friday Ramble - Songs in a Different Key

Leaves crunching underfoot or rattling like sabres, ice crystals limning fences, blowsy plumes of frosted grasses, leaf strewn puddles on the trail—all are plangent leitmotifs in the windy musical work that is late autumn. At this time of the year, the woodland is an Aeolian harp, a vast musical instrument that only the wind can play.

The landscape is settling slowly into the subdued tints of early winter: bronzes, creams, beiges and silvery greys, small splashes of winey red, burgundy, russet, here and there touches of a deep inky blue almost iridescent in its sheen and intensity.

On our morning walks, frost forms sugary drifts on old wood along our path, dusts ferns and outlines fallen leaves almost transparent in their lacy textures. An owl's artfully barred feather lies in thin sunlight under the fragrant cedars down by the spring and seems to be giving off a graceful, pearly light of its own. The weedy residents of forest, field and fen cavort in fringed and tasseled hats.

One needs another lens and tuning for late autumn and early winter, a different sort of vision, songs in a different key. The senses are performing a seasonal shift of their own, moving carefully from longer, brighter days and grand summer happenings into the consideration of things small, still and muted, but complete within themselves and perfect, even when they are cold and wet and tattered.

There is light in the world, even in these dark times, and I have to remember that. My camera and lens never forget, and out in the woods, they drink in light like nectar. I am thankful that they do and that they remind me at every turning along on the trail—we are made of star stuff. We live in a sea of light.

Thursday Poem - Fall

Are the leaves embarrassed by this sudden change
from serviceable green to gaudy red and gold?
All those colors clanging in the wind: copper,
bronze, brass. And when they all fall down
will the empty branches miss them? Or are they
comforted by the feathery touch of birds,
their pale claws and tiny beaks? In the meadow,
the goldenrod is waving goodbye, nodding
above the bracken, the pearly everlasting.
The corn’s already been taken; only stalks
and stubble remain. This is the season
of diminishing returns. And what will we do
with that hour we gain when the clocks turn
back? Will it rattle in our pocket, empty
as the moon? 

Barbara Crooker

Wordless Wednesday - Fenced

Sequestered, Week 315 (CCCXV)

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

There are ways in, journeys to the center of life, through time; through air, matter, dream and thought. The ways are not always mapped or charted, but sometimes being lost, if there is such a thing, is the sweetest place to be. And always, in this search, a person might find that she is already there, at the center of the world. It may be a broken world, but it is glorious nonetheless.

Linda Hogan, The Woman Who Watches Over the World: A Native Memoir

Seeing Red

Friday Ramble - Hibernate

This week's word offering is rooted in the Latin hībernātus, past participle of the verb hībernāre (to spend the winter) and the noun hiems (winter), also the Greek cheimá (winter) and Sanskrit hima meaning cold, frost or snow. All forms probably originated in the Indo-European form ghei-, also meaning winter. Our word is kin to the mightiest mountain range on the planet, for the name Himalaya means "the abode of snow" in Sanskrit, hima (see above) plus alayah, meaning abode.

Most birds in the northern hemisphere migrate south, but other species of wildlife go dormant through the long white season, and we refer to the process as hibernating. Bears exhibit an elegant and impressive physiology as they hibernate through the winter in their leaf-strewn dens. Squirrels, prairie dogs, groundhogs and hedgehogs also den up when temperatures fall, sleeping until outside temperatures rise and food becomes available again. Northern frogs, toads, snakes and turtles are masters of the art of hibernation too.

Humans "do" hibernation too, and we do it in various ways. Some of us migrate to warmer climes to escape ice and snow and cold, but most of us simply withdraw from the outside world to warm dens of our own. Our protocols for getting through the long white season are highly personal. We retrieve shawls, sweaters and gloves from cedar chests, accumulate stacks of books, munchies and music. We kindle fires in fireplaces, pull the draperies closed and surround our winter selves with things that are warm, embracing, spicy and redolent of comfort. For me, a mug of tea and a favorite shawl in deep, earthy red are the right stuff.

I buy more cookbooks between now and springtime, make endless pots of tea and pummel bread dough, listen to classical music and jazz, pose still life camera compositions on tables and window sills, pile up leaning towers of reading material. The books brought home are usually hardcovers - there is something comforting about holding the real thing in one's hands, the way its thick creamy paper feels, the smell of the ink, the shapes of the illustrations and the typefaces used. I can get totally caught up in the color of a morning cup of tea, and I have to resist the temptation to add cinnamon sticks, anise stars and peperoncino to anything I brew or stir up in the kitchen. At this time of the year, it is almost impossible to pass trees, hedgerows and drifts of fallen leaves without getting lost in their golds and reds and bronzes.

Hibernation also means wandering around with a camera, trying to capture the light of the sun as it touches clouds, contrails and migrating geese, sparks across frost dappled fields, farm buildings and old rail fences. It's a meditative process holding out stillness and tantalizing glimpses of something wild, elusive and elemental. Ice, frost, snow and the paucity of light notwithstanding, it's all good, and something to be treasured. Every view is a wonder and no two images are ever the same, even when they were captured in exactly the same place.

Temperatures were below freezing overnight, and when I opened the draperies early this morning, there was frost in the garden. I had covered the remaining tomatoes in the veggie patch last night, and hopefully they have survived, but alas, my lovely big pot of basil has not.  When the sun rises, Beau and I will wrap up warmly and go off for a long walk in the crunchy leaves and sparkly grass. 

Thursday Poem - Unchurched

Autumnal sun streams through
these yellow maple leaves
translucent as stained glass.

The ground beneath my feet
is strewn with pine cones, acorns.
The random pattern of continuance.

Etched columns of pine and oak.
Incense of resin and fungi.
Great glacial stones for altars.

High winds and choirs of
minor breezes, the whispering hush.
It is the Sabbath. It is enough.

Dolores Stewart from The Nature of Things
(reprinted here with the late poet's kind permission)

Wordless Wednesday - Mum's the Word

October Lake

The lake is a quiet place in October. Its surface is untenanted by loons or ducks, by blundering humans or otters paddling effortlessly in the turbulent waters by Geddes bridge where the (Canadian) Mississippi river surges in. There is a deep gorge above the lake, and the river makes its entrance between the granite walls, roaring, flinging spray in all directions and at high speed. 

Only a few weeks ago, there were swimming birds, weekend boaters and fisher folk everywhere. Kids played on the beach and jumped off the raft anchored in the shallows nearby. Their parents tended fires on the shore that sent up smoke signals and made burnt offerings to the wild gods. The place had a festive air.

Sound in such places carries a long way, and on summer nights one could hear the wind in the trees on the far shore, outboard motors and canoe paddles moving boats along in the murk, laughter across the water. It was magic.

Now there is just us and the north wind. Beau and I are wrapped up against the bluster and the chilling damp that goes right to our blood and bones. We have each other, a thermos of tea, a field notebook and the camera. We are content.

Sequestered, Week 314 (CCCXIV)